"When a family doesn't have anything to eat because it must
pay the mortgage to usurers, no, that is not Christian, that is
not human," said Francis at Wednesday's general audience in a
salute to an Italian anti-usury association in attendance.

The pope called for the "commitment of institutions" to
fight usury, which he called a "dramatic social scourge that
wounds the inviolable dignity of the human being".

According to figures released after the pope's message, the
number of extortion and usury victims who asked for help from an
interior ministry crisis centre on loan-sharking more than
doubled last year, to over 1,500.

"And that is quite obviously just the tiniest tip of the
iceberg," the centre said.
Francis's broadside was the latest in a string of
condemnations of the effects of unbridled global capitalism
which has widened the gap between rich and poor worldwide.

Francis devoted much of his first major written teaching,
an apostolic exhortation, to a scathing critique of unchecked
neoliberal free-market policies, chiming with the message of
Jesus.

In the words of Rolling Stone, which put Francis on its
cover this week under the Bob Dylan protest song caption The
Time They are a-Changing, "The pope revealed his own obsessions
to be more in line with the boss' son".
Time magazine, which anointed Francis its person of the
year last month, highlighted that, in the exhortation, Francis
could "barely contain his outrage when he writes, "How can it be
that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies
of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two
points?".

"Elsewhere in his exhortation," Time went on, "he goes
directly after capitalism and globalization: "Some people
continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that
economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably
succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in
the world. This opinion...has never been confirmed by the
facts".

"He says the church must work "to eliminate the structural
causes of poverty" and adds that while "the Pope loves everyone,
rich and poor alike...he is obliged in the name of Christ to
remind all that the rich must help, respect and promote the
poor".
On January 23 Francis called on the world's media to help
bridge the "scandalous" divide between rich and poor.

"On the global level we see a scandalous gap between the
opulence of the wealthy and the utter destitution of the poor,"
said the Argentine pope in his message for the Catholic Church's
World Communications Day this summer.

Francis has taken every opportunity to draw attention to
the plight of the world's poor since his election to replace
Benedict XVI following his abdication last February.

"Our world suffers from many forms of exclusion,
marginalization and poverty, to say nothing of conflicts born of
a combination of economic, political, ideological, and, sadly,
even religious motives," the pope continued.

"In a world like this, media can help us to feel closer to
one another, creating a sense of the unity of the human family
which can in turn inspire solidarity and serious efforts to
ensure a more dignified life for all," said Francis.

Just before Christmas Francis said he wanted to visit the
southern Italian city of Taranto, plagued by environmental and
labour disasters caused at the troubled ILVA steelworks.

"The pontiff is eager to see the problems for himself,"
Taranto Archbishop Filippo Santoro said after a private audience
with the pope.

The ILVA steel plant has been at the centre of a
long-running judicial and political drama as courts have moved
to force the company to make expensive environmental upgrades to
the plant, accused of polluting the area and creating health
problems for more than a decade.

Meanwhile hundreds of jobs have been put at risk in an area
suffering the brunt of the recession.

A month earlier, Francis voiced the hope that Italy would
"find again the creativity and harmony necessary" for its
industrial development in a blessing at the presidential palace
in Rome.

Speaking beside Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, the
pontiff said the recession-hit country's development was
critical to "promoting the common good and the dignity of every
person, and to offering the international community its
contribution for peace and justice".